Wish You Orwell

Former National Security Advisor Uzi Arad claims Netanyahu ordered him to refrain from providing ministers with contradictory data

Yediot Achronot’s weekend supplement published a very long and equally stunning interview with disgraced National Security Advisor, Uzi Arad. Arad, who was forced to resign last year, was interviewed by Nachum Barne’a and Shimon Shiffer, and told them about the Byzantine court surrounding Netanyahu, and exposed the shocking fact he was interrogated by the ISA for hours in the Ben Gurion Airport as he came back from a mission in the US. But there’s one point which should trouble every Israeli, which was not emphasized enough.

During the interview, Arad says twice he lost favor with Netanyahu – Arad is a long-time follower – when he began contradicting Netanyahu’s position on Iran during discussions. Even worse from Netanyahu’s point of view, he provided the government with a different assessment about Iran and the way to thwart it. After one of those occasions, says Arad, Netanyahu took him aside and ordered him to refrain from contradicting him in the presence of others. According to Arad, Netanyahu was particularly worried that Arad’s documents may serve the investigative committee which will follow the Israeli attack on Iran. Netanyahu’s bureau did not deny those accusations.

This is a point which much must be investigated. Neither the PM nor the Minister of Security command the army; the commander is the government, a collective body. A prime minister who refuses to divulge contradictory information to his ministers is a prime minister who sabotages their ability to make an informed decision on that issue.

The government’s control of the armed forces in Israel has a chequered history. To make a long story short, as long as the government controlled the army, it succeeded or at least managed to avoid disaster. When it let slip of that control = particularly when it allowed factions within the government, with the minister of security always a participant, take control – calamity was often the result. The process’ lowest point was probably in 2006, when Shimon Peres, then a minister of something or other, opposed the decision to begin the Second Lebanon War – but voted for it anyway, telling the Winograd investigative committee that “you don’t vote against the prime minister in a time of war.” Such abdication of responsibility is hardly surprising when you’re familiar with Peres’ history; yet we must not allow it to repeat itself.

Now we are being told by Arad that Netanyahu is blinding his ministers from seeing the full picture. One can hardly think of a better reason for an investigation committee, which, should it find Arad told the truth, should send Netanyahu home, and irrevocably tarnish the careers of ministers who agreed to be turned into marionettes. One Shimon Peres was more than enough.

This is particularly important as Israel and Iran are not, and have never been, in a state of war. The two countries, testified Foreign Minister David Levi a decade ago, never declared war on each other. Earlier wars and operations were declared by the governments against countries with which Israel was at war; this is not the case with Iran. This war should be debated by the Knesset – particularly if it is true that Netanyahu is misleading his ministers.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

By supporting the Assad regime, elements of Balad and CPI show they are not allies in the fight for human rights

Last Thursday, a special UN commission on Syria found that the Assad regime is committing crimes against humanity, and that senior regime officials are participants in these crimes. The commission was significantly limited in its ability to report on events as the regime denied it entry into Syria, and it had to rely on the testimonies of refugees. Even so, it’s important to take its conclusions seriously: in several previous cases the first testimonies about crimes against humanity came from refugees.

The refugees supply us with only a partial view, yet they indicate a terrible desolation, mention thousands of casualties, the systematic use of rape as a tool of terror, and prevalent torture. The number of civilians massacred by the regime in the last year is estimated in many thousands – much more, for instance, than the number killed by the IDF during the Second Intifada. Naturally, the precise number is not known, but an opposition site, considered reputable, cites 8,791 dead; another site, which also furnishes a map of the atrocities, estimates the number of dead at 9,236. Both numbers are accurate as to the time of writing of this post, and both of them reflect only the known dead, i.e. people identified by others. It’s very probable that there are hundreds more, unrecognized. (I want to thank Elizabeth Tsurkov for helping me find this information).

None of this deterred hundreds of supporters of the Assad regime from gathering on Saturday night in Haifa, in order to express their support once more. Among them were several Balad activists, including MK Said Naffa. Also present was the secretary general of the CPI, Muhammad Naffa, whom we remember from his support of the fiction of the Doctor’s Plot. Many of the protesters wore shirts with the pictures of Assad on them, others were carrying placards with the picture of the slaughterer from Damascus – admittedly, he does not rise to the level of his father – and denied anything untoward happens north of the border. They spoke of an imperialist conspiracy, some denying Assad is capable of killing his citizens (Hebrew). As if, thirty years before Homs, we didn’t witness the massacre of Hama.

I assume that to readers of this blog my position on the crimes carried out by the IDF gunmen in the occupied territories is not precisely a state secret. Even so, the crimes of the IDF pale in comparison with those of the Syrian regime. The position of Balad about the IDF’s crimes is also well known. When it comes to the Syrian regime – well, that’s when the accusations are shelved and the excuses are brought out.

Turns out, there are Arabs you may actually kill. Turns out, there are soldiers who are allowed to kill indiscriminately. Turns out, there are ambulances which you may delay in roadblocks, and some patients whose arrival in a hospital is not all that urgent. Turns out, there are cities you may shell with impunity. Turns out, there are apparati who do have the right to make people vanish. Turns out, there are some people who may exercise collective punishment, and that’s OK. Turns out, there are people with a license to torture – all you have to do is switch the sign with the three Hebrew letters with one which spells out the most hated word in Arabic, Mukhabarath, and that makes everything just peachy.

Remember that, next time Balad calls us to join it in struggle. It may be the right struggle, but we should not forget this. People who consider human rights to be just a tool in a struggle, one immediately abandoned once the true goal must be defended – that is, the failed, national-socialistic Arab nationality of the Baath party – is unworthy to join us. Those people will sell us – in fact, they already have.

After all, next time we speak of Arab-Jewish solidarity, we shall hear the mocking calls from all around us: solidarity with the supporters of the butcher of Homs? With the people who consider Syrian blood to be worthless, but keen in anguish when Jews spill Palestinian blood? Who have just rediscovered the maxim that he who saves one soul, is held to have saved the whole world? Are you an Assad supporter, Jew-boy? No, that’s not what it looks like, look, it’s complicated…

And this moment will come. Balad has barely survived its last disqualification from the polls, and the right-wing will make certain another disqualification will come. And then, of course, we will have to defend Balad – because such a move is a naked ploy to drive Israeli Arabs away from the polls. But how do we baptize ourselves, holding such a bloated critter? How do we explain ourselves, when those Assad pictures will be thrown in our faces as winding sheets? How do we speak of the future damage to Israeli democracy, when the people we try to defend have already shown how much they care about human rights?

Balad is not alone. Another participant in that rally was the secretary general of the CPI, the main faction of Hadash, Muhammad Naffa. The CPI’s position is that he was there in his capacity as a private citizen. Try the other leg, it’s got bells on. Had Naffa showed up at Netanyahu rally and offered his support, we wouldn’t be able to hear what he was saying because of the noise made by the ICBM which would have shot him away from the CPI. Assad yes, Netanyahu no?

Furthermore, the CPI’s official position is, to put it mildly, problematic (Hebrew). On the one hand, it denounces the regime and its murderous activity – and on the other hand, it denounces its opponents who ask for foreign aid in their struggle as “servants of foreign interests who […] use factionalist slogans and reject any attempt at dialogue, which will save human lives. […] The interest of the Syrian people is that the current regime stop oppressing the legitimate popular struggle, the shooting of citizens, and the use of forceful military answers to inner social and political questions.” You don’t say. That does seem to be the interest of the people, but what do they do if the regime, for unknown reasons, refuse to acknowledge this simple truth and refuse to halt the killing? How can a group of insurgents fight an organized army, bringing all its power to bear, without foreign aid?

All this, of course, does not touch on the laughable position of a communist party, supposedly promoting international brotherhood, which is suddenly shocked, shocked by the prospect of foreign intervention. I can still recall some foreign interventions which did not trouble the CPI’s conscience all that much – say, the one in Hungary in 1956, or the one in Prague in 1968. It is also worth mentioning that while it is fiercely opposed to “foreign intervention”, it has no problem whatsoever with the fact the Russian military-industrial complex is heavily involved in Syria, to the tune of 4.7 billion USD in the last four years (Hebrew). Oh, well: Russia was always the second homeland for these people.

The CPI can be very clear when it wants to. When it is waving such Jesuit dialectics at us, when its secretary general remains in office after publicly supporting Assad, progressive Israelis should abandon it. As long as it keeps its Stalinist secretary general in place, and as long as it keeps promoting a “yes and no” position towards Syria – yes to Assad, no to armed popular insurrection – it should be treated as a Stalinist party, and act accordingly.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

The Khader ‘Adnan affair showed the true face of all of the Israelis involved in the occupation, from its enablers in the courts to the Israeli mob

Khader ‘Adnan became a Palestinian national hero two days ago, and rightly so. He brought the Netanyahu government, as well as the Israeli apparatus of darkness (as Uri Avneri called it in the 1950s) to its knees. In a hastily-convened hearing in the High Court of Justice (HCJ), the prosecution offered ‘Adnan’s lawyers a classic saving-face deal: ‘Adnan would be discharged at 17^th April on the latest, the same day his administrative detention was to end, and possibly earlier. It conditioned his release on no new evidence found against ‘Adnan – as if it had any prior evidence. The Prime Minister’s office was the first to report the deal, so it may well have been cooked there, once Netanyahu understood what a colossal Hasbara disaster ‘Adnan’s death would be.

This deal is reminiscent of the military trial described by David Grossman in his 1987, “The Yellow Time”: the counsel for the defense proves that the indictment against his client is groundless, and the judge – who, says Grossman, must prevent the system from being embarrassed, or it may collapse – convicts the defendant of a felony he was not charged with, and sentences him to the same number of days he already spent incarcerated. The government cannot just discharge ‘Adnan: its honor would be besmirched. It therefore insists on releasing him on the date it set for the end of his detention.

Aside from ‘Adnan, no one comes out of this looking good. The HCJ, which didn’t find time in its busy schedule for ‘Adnan’s hearing until today, suddenly found the time for an emergency session on Tuesday – presumably in order to confirm an already agreed-upon deal – has demonstrated, in its first decision, striking indifference to the lives and the human rights of a Palestinian administrative detainee; and in the second, just how much he is a tool of the Zionist regime and its security apparatus. Keep that in mind, when next some Justice declaims about how the court is committed to human rights. These disappear at the entrance of the apparatus’ dungeons.

The prosecution also comes out badly. The slave of the apparatus, who rarely if ever has any qualms about representing any sort of injustice in the courts, was forced to admit – by its very acquiescence to this deal – that it had no evidence against ‘Adnan. Had it any, it would have pressed for a indictment. It has nothing to show, not even in the military courts, a system so corrupt it would be insulting to marsupials to call it a kangaroo court.

The apparatus comes out particularly poorly. ‘Adnan has provided the final proof that the occupation has decayed the minds of the occupiers, who are incapable of collecting evidence against people who has no rights to protect them against such collecting: whose houses are open wide to any armed goon, whose phones may be eavesdropped on without a warrant, whose computers may be confiscated without consulting a judge, and who are in practice susceptible to torture without penalty; no Israeli court ever found that a Palestinian was tortured by the ISA. Even so, all the apparatus can do is detain them without trial, hoping the torture of endless incarceration – which is the essence of administrative detention – will break the spirit of the detainee.

BTselem noted that while Israel kept 219 administrative detainees in January 2011, at the end of January 2012 their number rose to 309, almost a 50% rise. 26% of the detainees were held for six months to a year, 28.5% more than a year but less than two, 16 of them were held between two years and four and a half years, and one was held for more than five. That is, his administrative detention was prolonged no less than nine (!) times. International law permits the use of administrative as a last, desperate measure; a country that routinely holds hundreds of people in such detention cannot make that argument.

The Prime Minister’s office claimed on Twitter that ‘Adnan would be discharged “because his detention will end soon, not because he is innocent.” But of course ‘Adnan is innocent: every person who was not convicted is innocent. That’s what the word means. This is the principle of the presumption of innocence is all about. ‘Adnan was not only not convicted, he was not even charged.

The Israeli public, which now collectively moans in the comments about how they let a terrorist go and why didn’t they just let him die, has come out despicable of all. The public does not want to know how the apparatus manages the occupied territories in his name. It can’t handle the information. It blinds itself and hardens its heart. It does not want to be informed. It didn’t want to know even back in the 1970s. So now it tries every possible excuse: the man was dangerous (which is why he will be discharged in two months), he is a terrorist (precisely what the apparatus of darkness couldn’t prove), he was the subject of classified intelligence (how do you know? Have you seen it?) – anything to avoid facing what is being done in its name. The torturers, kidnappers and gunmen could make a credible defense in years to come that they were just public emissaries, that they embodies the collective will of an apathetic and terrified mob, which was willing to excuse them even for the use of children as human shields – but not of looting, something its middle-class conscience couldn’t stomach.

Khader ‘Adnan, one may hope, broke the administrative detention system. The world is looking now. The forbearance towards Israeli crimes, born of the sense of guilt following the Holocaust, is finally running out, if forty years too late.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

The High Court of Justice decided to delay the urgent appeal in the case of Khader ‘Adnan to Thursday – and may not reach a decision even then

Khader ‘Adnan is on his 65th day of a hunger strike, and today the High Court of Justice (HCJ) decided today to delay dealing with the urgent appeal in his case to Thursday. Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, which supports the appeal, noted that that would be ‘Adnan’s 69th day of a hunger strike, and there is no guarantee that the justices will bother to make their decision then. It’s a Thursday, you know, and the weekend is so close, and this is just a Palestinian in administrative detention, and he must be held for a reason. Irrecoverable dying begins on the 70th day of a hunger strike. That would be Friday.

Now, the HCJ knows, when it wants to, how to hold swift hearings. Before the evacuation of the settler outpost Amona, it held a marathon debate till morning before making its final decision. But that was an illegal outpost, built on private Palestinian land; the debate was on something important, such as the theft rights of settlers. Not something petty like the most essential rights of a non-Jew.

People tell me: ‘Adnan can stop his hunger strike whenever he wants. This is very true. He can also solve most of his other problems and simply sign whatever his interrogators want him to sign. He just has to lie to himself. Whoever makes that claim has no clue as to what human dignity is, the basic right to not have a jackboot at your throat; or, perhaps, he thinks Palestinians denuded of human dignity.

‘Adnan’s detention serves no practical purpose. He is not interrogated as he lies chained in a hospital. Even were the security apparatus to discharge him now, he will not be a danger to anyone anytime soon. He has already suffered severe damage. There is no reason to keep him detained, but one: his release will embarrass the apparatus. It will testify that there was no cogent reason to hold him in the first place. It will put the entire system of administrative detention in question.

So what we basically see is a pissing contest between a dark apparatus, the strongest in Israel and quite likely in the entire Middle East, and a sick, dying man, under guard, chained to his bed, with nothing but his faith to drive him on. The HCJ was supposed to be a bulwark of this man, stand between him and the apparatus, and defend him. That, after all, is the legend they keep telling us about the HCJ: that it is comprised of wise, all-knowing judges, standing undaunted in defense of human rights against the government. The thin line of black robes.

The court made excellent use of this legend, and used it in the political struggles of the 1990s and 2000s. Some Israelis actually received aid from him. But it never defended the Palestinian. Every Palestinian had the right to appeal to the HCJ against the demolition of his house; the court never prevented any. Not a single one. The court approved one administrative detention after another, even though this basically took us to pre-Magna Carta law. Even when the apparatus decided to exile 400 people suspected of being Hamas members to Lebanon, the HCJ approved the decision – admittedly, it held a swift hearing on the urgent appeal of the deportees.

The justices know precisely where they sit. If they hear the petition, they will also have to make a ruling. If they reject the petition, ‘Adnan’s blood will be on their hands, which can be quite uncomfortable the next time they visit Europe. If they accept it, on the other hand, they will face the wrath of the Israeli mob, which does not understand what’s all the noise about some Ay-rab. So they postpone the hearing. As the old joke went, perhaps the dog will die; perhaps the baron (the apparatus) will. Perhaps someone else will deal with this hot potato for them.

And that is evil cowardice. And that, too, should be borne in mind when we shall have our own judges’ trials.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

The demand that the NYT chief of office in Jerusalem be “unbiased” towards the Netanyahu government is the height of chutzpah

Jeffrey Goldberg, the former IDF prison guard and self-appointed gatekeeper to all things Jewish and Zionist, is not happy with the new NYT Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren. He has two problems with her.

The first, and most important, is that Rudoren had the temerity to read Peter Beinart’s new critical book about Israel and, lo and behold, support it. Goldberg whines that she is showing “bias” against Likud.

Which, I think, is perfectly fine. After all, the Likud prime minister recently said that his main enemies are the NYT and Ha’aretz. He has refused to write an oped for the NYT, snarkily saying he didn’t want to “Bibiwash” it. Once a public official takes a public stand as an declared enemy of a newspaper, I don’t think the paper should continue to treat him as any other public officials. Journalists are not, and should not be, angels. To blame the NYT bureau chief of “bias” against Likud after this is utter chutzpah and evidence of the writer being a propagandist.

Goldberg also calumnies Ali Abunimah, claiming that he is an “advocate of Israel’s destruction” and comparing him to a “settler rabbi,” and deplores Rudoren’s “chummy” relations with him. You don’t have to like Abunimah – I’m not a fan, myself – to bristle at this. Unlike settlers, rabbis or not, Abunimah is not committing war crimes by his very existence and he does not rely on the subjugation of another people for it. Furthermore, Abunimah does not “advocate Israel’s destruction”: he merely demands Israel stop being Zionist. Given that in this world, practical Zionism is racist and cannot be otherwise, this is a worthy demand which has nothing to do with the “destruction of Israel,” merely its transformation. (Yes, I can imagine an ideal world in which Zionism is not necessarily racist; if you do visit that world, please give my regards to the pink unicorn.)

And finally, Goldberg graciously grnats Rudoren his permission to not be a Zionist. One would think that, as the Jersualem bureau also deals with Palestine and Palestinians, this should be an actual requirement (otherwise, the bureau chief should prima facie be considerd biased), but I guess that after an NYT chief whose son served in the IDF, we should be grateful for small mercies.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

As Im Tirzu takes its opponents to court, a troubling picture of the inspiration of its leader emerges

Yesterday, the defense in the trial of Im Tirzu vs. the Facebook group “Im Tirzu – a fascist movement” presented its depositions. The plaintiff is the infamous right-wing group, the defendants are a group of leftist activists, the issue is libel. It began in 2010 when Ronen Shoval, chairman of Im Tirzu, sent the following email to Roy Yelin, who opened the group:

Hello Roy,

From perusal of the Facebook page “Im Tirzu – a Fascist movement” it seems you created it.

Im Tirzu is not a fascist movement, and will not suffer being defamed. I wish to inform you that if you won’t delete this Facebook group within 72 hours, we intend to contact a law firm on the folliwing Sunday and sue you personally for defamation and libel.

Just to make this clear: turning the “Im Tirzu – a fascist movement” Facebook page over to another person will not diminish your personal responsibility.

I ask you to consider the issue carefully, before we are forced to turn to legal measures.

Sincerely,

Ronen Shoval

Yalin did not fold, and the trial commenced (Hebrew). Im Tirzu demands 2.6 million NIS (about 702,000 USD) from the eight administrators of the group (full disclosure: I know some of them personally) for defaming it.

Im Tirzu always used goon tactics. For a long time, there was no page about Im Tirzu in the Hebrew Wikipedia, because Shoval threatened to sue if it was described as a right-wing movement. It shows classical hypocrisy: Im Tirzu whines about being silenced while silencing others. Its lawyer claimed the Facebook group was “an attempt to publicly assassinate Im Tirzu.” I guess a lawsuit for 2.6 million is just a nicety.

Im Tirzu is using foreign funds, particularly from the American right-wing – much of its money came from John Hagee, so I guess we can term it “rabid right wing” – and is copying the oh-so-American system of SLAPP lawsuits and bringing it to Israel.

In order for the SLAPP tactic – i.e., a suit which is intended not to win at court but to make the opponent cower and remove an annoying truth he published – to work, you need a scared opponent and a malfunctioning legal system. The Israeli one fits the bill: trials last for years, and and even if you do win, as a rule the courts award you just a fraction of your expenses. So, if are forced to go to court, you already lost, even if you win. How convenient for NGOs (or, in Im Tirzu’s case, GONGOs) who are backed by shadowy donors from abroad; how unfortunate for political activists who try to speak truth to power.

Is Im Tirzu a fascist movement? I think so. So does the world-renowned expert on fascism (and victim of Jewish terrorism) Prof. Ze’ev Sternhall (Hebrew). Comparing Im Tirzu to the 14 points of fascism is instructive; but there’s more.

Among the depositions by the defense is one by Tomer Persico, who is a researcher of religions and writer of one of the most important blogs on the issue in Israel (and, full disclosure, is a friend). Persico himself was once the victim of a SLAPP lawsuit after describing the court of a new age guru who dubbed himself “the Buddha from Orion” (I kid you not), which made him a cause celebre in the Israeli blogosphere.

In his deposition, Persico described a conversation with Shoval, which took place a few months ago as they were interviewed by Makor Rishon. In the recorded conversation, Persico told Shoval he was surprised to see clear romantic German influences on Shoval’s book, and was surprised when the latter freely admitted it. Shoval said that “in my thesis, I dealt a lot with Ficthe, Schelling, Herder and George Sorel.” The latter is considered to be one of the founders of Italian fascism, and was fascinated by political violence: he praised Action Francaise, the nationalist movement which led to the founding of French fascism, he praised Mussolini – and Lenin, too. He was also an anti-Semite who spread the blood libel (though he was on the side of the angels in the Dreyfus Affair). This is, to say the least, a rather strange inspiration for the leader of a so-called neo-Zionist revival movement. Persico said he was “stunned.”

Shoval, says Persico, claimed Persico was unkind in his review of his book, since when was using the ideas of Herder and Fichte about the organic nature of the volk, he was speaking metaphorically. Shoval said he didn’t put it quite that way in his book, since the purpose of the book “is to express simplistically ideas – I say, simplistically – ideas which are very deep… to make it clear to the multitude… the meaning of the word ‘Zionism’ today.” Persico claimed that such simplicity is dangerous and that it is typical of Im Tirzu’s activity; Shoval replied that “this is an issue of marketing strategies.”

So, in the name of marketing strategies, Shoval is injecting volkist concepts into the Israeli mindset, concepts which originally – and he claims to know the original very well – have caused untold suffering both to the people they were injected into, to the minorities living among them, and to nearby nations. Ronen Shoval is exposed as a political charlatan, who knows precisely what poisoned wells he is using, knows precisely what his goals are, but is unwilling to be stamped with the proper title – volkist fascism – because of “marketing strategies.” He and his movement do all that by getting large sums of money from abroad, which they try to conceal to the extent of the law, and when someone points out their true nature, that is calls them a fascist movement, they sue him for 2.6 millions.

The intimidation works: Persico, who already went through the nightmare of a SLAPP suit (which ended very quickly, and in his victory) decided not to publish the conversation he had with Shoval just not to risk another lawsuit. Now this conversation is a part of a legal deposition, and hence protected.

So if you believe you should support a small group of young activists fighting for freedom of expression in Israel and for the ability to speak the truth even in the face of fascist groups with plenty of money from unknown sources, and if you think people are entitled to legal representation even if their father, unlike Shoval’s, is not a multi-millionaire, go here and donate. I already did.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

Several actions by the current government are intended to deny the opposition its essential freedom of action

One of the basic principles of a democratic regime is that it allows all participants to participate in it equally. The basic assumption is that the faction currently in power will be removed from it someday, and that the opponents of the government are allowed the same rights in spreading their ideas. Another basic assumption is that a change of government is a healthy thing; that a regime which makes replacing it difficult is already on the way to dictatorship or at the very least an authoritarian regime. In a democratic regime, or at any rate in a society imbued with a democratic ethos, the government does not change the rules in mid-game, particularly not in its favor.

This is how we should view the series of bills persecuting the left proposed by the Netanyahu coalition in the last two years. Let’s deal with one of the latest, one which Haaretz notes (Hebrew) will be debated tomorrow by the ministerial legislative committee, which under this government is the fast track for “private” bills (i.e., those not proposed by the government or a party but by MKs without the support of either).

The bill was tabled by Ze’ev Elkin – one of the leaders of the witch hunts – and Zion Finian, both Likud backbenchers. Its name is misleading: “A bill for the amending of the IRS order (promoting settlement.” What it does (you can read it in a Hebrew document form here) is grant up to 35% tax deduction for contributions to the settlements. Its language is opaque: “In the IRS order, in section 9(2), paragraph (b), in the definition of ‘public goal’, ‘promotion of settlements’ will follow ‘education’.”

In plain English, it means that Israel will from now on recognize the promotion of construction in the settlements as a public goal which it exempts from tax. Elkin and Finian argue for their bill thusly: “Among the various public goals, the goals of empowering Zionism and the promotion of Zionist settlements are conspicuous in their absence. In these days, of constant erosion of values in general and the values of Zionism and settlements in particular, those values should be returned to their former glory and put back in their proper place. One of the ways to do so is in giving public institutions acting to realize these goals a tax deduction and recognizing such contributions for tax purposes.”

“Constant erosion of values in general and the values of Zionism and settlements in particular”? Just in which parallel universe does Elkin live? Maybe the same one inhabited by Danny Danon, who several days ago was whining (Hebrew) about the nefarious activities of “leftist elements within the government.” But that is the nature of volkist hysteria: it’s always on the verge of annihilation, always – particularly when it actually rules – convinced it is in “constant erosion.”

What Elkin and Finian’s bill is trying to do is to sneak under the radar a critical change in Israel’s attitude to the settlements: Now you can receive a tax deduction for building outside Israel. This, in short, is another way of transferring funds from Israel to the occupied territories. The bill is another step in the creeping annexation of the West Bank.

Elkin, who was already exposed as a traitor who informed radical settlers on the movements of IDF forces, is also one of the main proponents of the bills which will deny Israeli left organizations their tax benefits. Here is the world according to Elkin: contributions to human rights organizations, which are clearly affiliated with the left (well, given that the Israeli right is Jehovist and inherently racist, that’s not much of a surprise) will not be tax deductible – and hence, they’ll have a harder time spreading their ideas. On the other hand, organizations acting outside the state of Israel and who actively try to annex Israel to Judea, will. All in the name of “erosion of the values of Zionism and settlement.”

A government is not supposed to make war on its civilians, is not supposed to use the power of the state in order to prevent itself from being replaced. And that’s precisely what Elkin and co. are doing. Here we come to another interesting issue, pointed out to me by Alon Entin, who runs the human rights tool in the Open Knesset website (Hebrew): The law “Obliging full disclosure by organizations supported by a foreign entity”, which the Knesset enacted a year ago, exempts (see article 7 of the law, Hebrew) “national institutes” from this obligation. We are talking about the Jewish Agency, the JNF, and “corporations under their control.”

The Jewish Agency has been, for quite some time, a money funnel for right-wing organizations. Twice, it transferred large amounts of money to Im Tirzu – which disseminates the messages of the Prime Minister’s office and which in all likelihood received a large donations from a former senior official in Netanyahu’s office. And as Uri Blau exposed yesterday in Ha’aretz (Hebrew), NGO Monitor – a right-wing attack dog directed at human rights NGOs, which recently put +972 on its sights – has also received a large donation (570,000 NIS, some 154,000 USD) through the Jewish Agency. The latter refused to disclose the source of the donation.

So we may – actually, should – suspect that article 7 in the “full disclosure” law, which was not a part of the bill’s original version, was put there so the government could continue to funnel funds to its GONGOs, i.e. organizations which pretend to be NGOs but in reality receive government support, directly or indirectly, in order to further the government’s goals.

This is the place to note that while Netanyahu is leading his hounds in baying against “foreign funding” for leftist organizations, Netanyahu’s primaries contributions in January 2012 amounted to 787,329 NIS. Tally Schneider exposed (Hebrew) the fact that all of this money, apart from 357 NIS, came from foreign donations. That’s how it is on the right: In order to divert attention from the fact that the prime minister is financed by a foreign oligarch like Sheldon Edelson, who not only contributes directly to him but gives him a huge gift in the form of his own paper, Yisrael Hayom, they make a huge noise about the (much smaller) donations received by the left – and change the rules of the game while they’re at it.

At the same time, Netanyahu’s office is compensating Yisrael Hayom’s ‘journalists’ directly: It was caught paying Dror Eydar for “writing speeches and lectures.” This is the second time this week the Prime Minister’s office was caught paying an Israeli journalist.

What we see here is an offensive by a multi-headed hydra against Israeli democracy. One head snuffs out the contributions to organizations opposed to the government; Another makes the government’s main goal – promoting the creeping annexation of the West Bank – tax deductible; A third sends large sums of money to so-called NGOs who, lo and behold, somehow always have a connection to a senior Netanyahu supporter; A fourth head denies the option of criticizing these money transfers by exempting the semi-governmental organizations who transfer them from full disclosure; A fifth is people who are supposed to be independent journalists, who work for the Prime Minister’s office without bothering to supply their readers with full disclosure.

The goal of this settler-capital complex is to preserve Netanyahu in office by waging an unceasing psychological warfare against the Israeli public. When public funds are used to delude the public, when the sins of the dear leader himself (the fact that he is funded by foreigners hostile to Israeli democracy) are projected as the sins of the opposition whose hands the prime minister tries to bind, as he controls more and more of the media – When all that happens, we are no longer in a democracy, but hurtling towards Putinism.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

Latest decision by the PM’s office shows the hypocrisy of the right when it comes to objectionable statements

The Prime Minister’s Office recently reported (Hebrew) that it receives editing and translating services from Uri Elitzur, who will serve as a speech writer for the PM. Elitzur is a settler pundit, who in 1998, during Netanyahu’s first term, served as his bureau chief. He is now the editor of the weekly supplement of Makor Rishon, a right-wing leaning newspaper. There’s something noble and very rare in Israeli political life for a person to accept a lower position in an office he once led; Elizur’s sense of duty overcame his ego, which is to be commended. In a phone conversation, Elizur tried to downplay this, and said he was merely a friend of Netanyahu who sometimes provided him with aid. And yet.

Unfortunately, there is a problem with Elitzur being hired by the PM’s office. In 2004, as the Disengagement plan gathered steam, Elitzur called settlers to defend themselves with force (Hebrew) from soldiers coming to evict them, as long this does not include firearms. The Government’s Counsel, Menny Mazuz, decided not to open an investigation into these comments (Hebrew). The prosecution said that there was “suspicion of a felony”, but the state’s prosecutor, Shay Nitzan decided (Hebrew), “due to the restrained policy of the prosecution in such matters,” not to investigate. Later that year, Elitzur signed a petition (Hebrew) calling the IDF soldiers to disobey their orders to carry out the Disengagement.

Needless to say, whenever a leftist who is suspected of some questionable comments – Yishayahu Leibovich and Ze’ev Sternhall come to mind – is offered a natioal prize or an office, the right wing’s incitement machine goes into high gear, and demands it will be rescinded. In Leibovich’s case, who famously said Israel is becoming a “Judeo-Nazi” state in the 1980s, they managed to deprive him of his Israel Prize. This machine is employed against left-wing NGOs as well: When one of their employees is caught in, God forbid, saying soldiers should refuse to serve in the occupied territories, or in thinking Israel is an aparheid state, or – most serious of heresies – that there is such a thing as legitimate Palestinian resistance to the occupation, the Im Tirzu brigade is on the march. What would have happened to a left-wing NGO or party, who’d have dared to hire a person who called upon Palestinians to harm IDF soldiers? It’s reasonable to assume MK Danny Danon and Im Tirzu leader Ronen Shuval would have organized stormy protests against it, and would demand that it be dissolved.

But when it is a right-winger who called soldiers to refuse orders, and said they should be harmed in fulfilling their duties, the Prime Minister invites him to write his speeches. So it goes.

(Full disclosure: Unlike Uri Elitzur, Shay Nitzan has decided to investigate the undersigned)

(Yossi Gurvitz)

Israel’s most famous torturer threatens to expose the dirty secrets of the Israeli security system, if he does not receive remuneration

Yediot Ahronot’s “Sheva Yamim”, a weekend supplement, published a long interview yesterday with “Captain George,” the nom de guerre of a disgraced army interrogator, who has become Israel’s most infamous torturer. George, who sues the government for kicking out of the army, says clearly that his goal is blackmailing the government.

“I kept my mouth shut and said nothing about this case [the interrogation and torture of Amal’s Mustafa Dirani – YZG], as well as many other cases in which they used the methods of coverup, obfuscation and lies,” says George to Yediot’s Ronen Bergman, “because I was waiting for someone to come up and say “stop, hold on, we can’t go on like this.’ If they’d come to me a few years back and told me ‘you’ve paid a heavy price, what do you want in order to close this affair quietly? What sort of compensation do you need in order to stay backstage?’ As far as I am concerned, even if they’d given me a job abroad, say in Alaska, and took care of me and my family, everything would be fine and I would shut up forever and this meeting with you would never have taken place. But none of this happened and I think we’ve been too good children.”

In short, like many before him who carried out the security apparatus’ dirty jobs and were exposed, George thinks he was sold, thrown to the dogs, and this despite doing just what everyone else was doing or what they were ordered to do. Unlike others before him, who said they merely wanted to clear their name, George has a price tag: A job in Alaska. As he didn’t get it, he is going to break the apparatus’ omerta oath and testify in court. “If this goes to court, what I told you today is just the teaser,” he threatens, “Trust me – no one really wants me to climb the stand. If I have to stand there and speak of Dirani, you’ll find out I have plenty more to say about how the apparatus acts when it needs to hide all sorts of things […] and everyone is a liar, which is why the country is where it is today, no deterrence, nothing. And in the end? I’m the apparatus’ scapegoat.”

It is a common saying that torturers – and George, by his own admission, is a torturer – are the most cowardly of people. Now we also find out they are the most corrupt. George knows of crimes, but he has no problem with them. He only threatens to expose them when he is in harm’s way. He is behaving like a mafia capo, asked to pay the price: He tries to intimidate his bosses, saying if they won’t take care of him, there’s a lot he can say. Luckily for him, the Israeli security apparatus is still a few steps above the Cosa Nostra, or George would meet his end in a mysterious accident.

George whines that he is accused of sexual crimes. Now, there’s very little doubt that had George resorted to electrocuting Dirani, or use the water torture known by the euphemism of waterboarding, the case would be much less prominent. But George was accused by Dirani of raping him with a nightstick; And George admits – he has little choice, there is a witness – that he ordered a male IDF soldier to undress and approach Dirani in a threatening manner, and then told Dirani the soldier was about to rape him. He even reprimanded the soldier, who was smiling in embarrassment: “Behave correctly, this is serious business.”

This complaint againt George was the second. The first came from Iraqi defectors a few years earlier: They, too, charged that George threatened them with rape. The IDF managed to cover up that case, which may have emboldened George in the Dirani case. He himself claims that the threat of rape is a standard procedure in the IDF’s prisoners interrogation unit (Unit 504) where he was serving.

There are several good reasons to believe him: A few weeks back Uvda, a Channel 2 investigative journalism program, showed a clip in which George’s commander was threatening Dirani with rape; Many Palestinian detainees reported a similar threat; And in at least one case – that of the murdered IDF soldier, Amnon Pomrantz, in 1990 – the reporter Gabi Nitzan wrote that the ISA (Shin Beth) took several children as hostages, in order to convince their brothers, who were suspected of setting the unconscious Pomrantz on fire, to turn themselves in (I had the misfortune of looking after one of these children for a short while). The ISA agents told the children’s families that if the suspects won’t turn themselves in, the children would be sent to a detainee camp, where they would be raped.

Did George rape Dirani with a nightstick? He vehemently denies this. Dirani’s anus suffered injuries which may be the result of such a rape; George claims the are the result of constipation. According to his version, Dirani was suffering from constipation and so his interrogators forced him to swallow a laxative, and then forced him to wear a diaper. Dirani claimed that he was forced to wear the diapers even when they were full of excrement. This method of humiliating a prisoner by forcing him to wallow in his feces is known from various other torturous regimes – it was used, among others, by the Americans in Abu Ghraib. George’s explanation – constipation – sounds somewhat dubious.

Aside from the rape claim, George basically confirms every allegation by Dirani, adding to them the fact the interrogators used the most effective of tortures, the sleep-denial (known to the inquisition as tormentum insomniae). As an aside, Bergman notes that when Dirani was kidnapped from Lebanon in 1994, while still on Lebanese ground, one of the gunmen who kidnapped him pressed a pistol to the head of Dirani’s son and threatened to shoot him if Dirani didn’t tell him immediately where the missing navigator, Ron Arad, was held. The threat was not consummated.

What did the IDF brass know of all this? In a rather convenient manner, the tapes of Dirani’s interrogation have mysteriously disappeared. George, who claims everything he did was authorized, claims that General Amos Gilad – senior intelligence officer, now retired from active service and serving as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories – was watching the interrogations in real time, and if anything was out of the ordinary, he should have said something. The Security Ministry denies that Gilad was involved in whatever happened there. Without the tapes, we’ll never know.

George further claims that many detainees died during interrogations – particularly ISA interrogations – and this was covered up. This claim ought to be taken seriously. It may well be that when George is breaking the conspiracy of silence, he is providing Israel with vastly more useful service than he did during his long career in the IDF’s torture unit. The torture of Dirani – George was not his only torturer – did not work, neither did the threat to shoot his son before his very eyes: Dirani did not provide any useful information on Arad. George, naturally, claims otherwise: He has to watch himself in the mirror in the morning, after all, and torturing someone for no benefit may be too much even for a scumbag of his proportions. The apparatus, however, rejected the information the torture yielded as untrustworthy.

The Dirani-George case, had it been treated properly, may have become the 300 Line affair of the Unit 504. This did not happen, simply because the public does not wish to know. In 2012 Israel (as in 1994 Israel, as in 1984 Israel) the idea that every person – every Dirani, every George – is a human being, which must not be deprived by reducing him to quivering piece of meat, lying in its own excrement, is still a radical one.

(Yossi Gurvitz)

Khader ‘Adnan is on his 48^th day of a hunger strike, protesting his administrative detention. He is chained to a bed in a Bnei Brak hospital, and it’s unknown whether his family will be permitted to visit him

Khader ‘Adnan, aged 34 of ‘Araba near Jenin, is on his 48^th day of a hunger strike, and is held chained to a bed in M’ayanot HaYeshua’ hospital in Bnei Brak. So reports Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I). ‘Adnan is protesting his administrative detention.

‘Adnan was detained on December 17^th 2011, and went on a hunger strike the following day; He refuses to consume anything but water. Despite his deteriorating situation – PHR-I says a person is in severe danger after the 45^th day of a hunger strike – a military judge declined yesterday to review ‘Adnan’s detention order and postponed the hearing for the second time. ‘Adnan showed to the hearing in a wheelchair.

PHR-I denounced the fact that M’ayanot HaYeshua’ allows ‘Adnan to be hospitalized in chains, noting that in doing so the hospital is in violation of medical ethics, as well as the instructions of the Israeli Health Ministry and the Israeli Physicians organizations. PHR-I asked that ‘Adnan’s chains be removed, and its president, Dr. Ruhama Marton, said that “the chaining of a prisoner to bed is intended solely for the purpose of humiliating him and cause him physical and mental hardship. The security argument is invalid in this case… The chaining of a patient to bed is contrary to international law. Administrative detainee Khader ‘Adnan is trying to defend his rights and his human dignity in the only way left to him, which is a hunger strike.”

In a conversation with Anat Litwin, the PHR-I official dealing with detainees and prisoners, she noted that the organization has also asked for permission for ‘Adnan’s family to visit him; Such permission is required as the family lives in the West Bank and ‘Adnan is held As the IDF did not respond to the request, the NGO made an urgent appeal to the Petah Tikva District Court. No decision has been made yet. Litwin said that “we’re not sure there would be anyone to receive them tomorrow”, and stated that ‘Adnan is in the last stages of a hunger strike. After the 45^th day, a person on a hunger strike’s ability to make decisions is hindered. Dying begins, as a rule, on the 55^th day of a hunger strike. PHR-I did receive permission to have two of its physicians meet ‘Adnan on January 29^th. The doctors spoke to ‘Adnan and informed him of his situations; He decided to continue the strike nevertheless.

Administrative detention in Israel is based on the British emergency laws, which were never repealed, even though the prime minister to-be Menachem Begin, as opposition leader, denounced them as “worse than the Nazi laws.” A person may be detained for up to six months without the government needing to show any evidence against him. Perhaps the most cruel element of administrative detention, which PHR-I considers to be a sort of a mental torture, is the fact that it may be extended time and time again. A murderer sentenced to 25 years at least knows when he will be released; An administrative detainee never does. Often, they are re-arrested on the day the six months expire.

B’Tselem spokesperson Sarit Michaeli noted that the organization noted that the number of administrative detainees is on the rise. In January 2011 Israel held 219 Palestinians in administrative arrest, and the number rose to 307 during December 2011. Michaeli noted that while administrative detention is not per se illegal in international law, its use is supposed to be extremely rare, as such a detainee cannot – for all practical reasons – defend himself, and often does not even know what he is suspected of.

Personally, I always considered the practice of administrative detention to be the worse of the occupation’s crimes. A person is imprisoned without a chance of clearing himself and without any way of knowing when he will be discharged. The system is so grotesque, the Inquisition was a better one: A detainee of the Holy Office had the right to name his enemies, and should the complaint against him come from them, the detainee would be discharged and the false accuser would face the inquisition instead. According to the system of administrative detention, the detainee does not have even that limited chance of clearing himself.

The ISA often claims that the people it holds in such detention are horrible, dangerous people. Maybe so. If that is the case, then take them to court and show your evidence. The conviction rate of the military court system is 99.76% and the judges often allow secret information against the defendant – i.e., information which is presented only to the judge, based on what is claimed to be intelligence. If the level of evidence the ISA holds against ‘Adnan won’t stand even in this crooked system, one can safely assume it has nothing it can show a court.

(Yossi Gurvitz)